Chapter Text
Contrary to popular belief, Barry Allen is actually rather capable of taking care of himself.
Okay. So it isn’t really a mystery where some misconceptions saying otherwise might have come from. After all, Barry has two left feet—both of which are capable of propelling his breakable body forward at over Mach 2—so he is no stranger to accidental bruises and the occasional broken bone. And okay, yeah. Sometimes, in the midst of working at the crime lab and running night patrols in Central City and convening with the newly formed Justice League—which is such a cool name, such a cool team, such a cool everything—Barry will forget to eat for a day (or three) and his body will respond by viciously edging out the corners of his vision until he takes the hint and scarfs down a snack. But ever since Barry was nine years old, he’s had to learn how to fend for himself. And he’s proud to say that his survival rate is currently at 100%, so he’s obviously doing something right.
Don’t get him wrong. It isn’t like all of his foster homes were bad—sure, there were a few where he got slapped around a bit, and he still has a scar on his eyebrow from where one of the older kids once punched him after learning that Barry was pining after another boy at their school—but even at the nicer homes, there was so much going on that Barry always tried to keep the attention away from himself so that his stressed out foster parents could dedicate more time to the kid kids. You know. The one’s that really needed the help. So Barry learned how to hide the small hurts, how to hole himself away when things are getting too intense until he’s able to function like a normal human being again. Or. Well. As normal of a human being as he’s ever been able to pass off as, anyway.
And, as hard as it’s gotten, he’s always managed to succeed. Somehow.
So, yeah. He’s a disaster, but he isn’t a hopeless one. And he needs the League to do a lot of things—to make him feel like he’s a part of something. To make him feel like he actually belongs somewhere for once. To make him feel like he’s not alone in an uncaring, unflinching universe that wants nothing more than to take everything that Barry has ever had away from him—but he doesn’t need them to hold his hand every time that he gets a little roughed up.
(Although sometimes—like right now, for instance—he kind of wants them to.
But that’s selfish. Ridiculous. He isn’t a child.
And it’s not like any of them would want to stick around for this.)
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He’s not entirely sure what caused it, but if Barry had to guess, he would say that it was the bomb from earlier today.
It wasn’t a run-of-the-mill, burst-into-flames-and-take-out-two-city-blocks kind of bomb, mind you, but a special bomb. A “nerve agent that not even you can hope to dispose of in time,” the villain-of-the-day had said, while adjusting his villain tie and gesturing at the briefcase with his villain gloves after Clark and Barry had burst through the doors of the bank before the rest of the League had a chance to catch up to them.
And Barry hadn’t believed him at first—because every villain likes to think that they are the Most Cunning Villain to ever face the League, and more often than not, they are wrong—but as Barry sent the man in the black suit and (strangely stylish, if not completely predictable) slouch hat sailing back with a careful push, he caught a glance of Clark grabbing onto the ticking briefcase (likely to send it flying into the stratosphere, because he is capable of doing that sort of thing), and Barry’s confidence faltered as Clark crumpled to the ground upon the first touch. And although Barry was able to frantically grab the case in time to run it into the deepest, most tightly sealed vault in the back of the bank himself, he was unable to escape before the bomb went off right in his face, spraying him with a light green gas that both clued him in on the kryptonite that had incapacitated Clark and made Barry cough so hard that his entire body ached for a good half hour afterwards.
But that had been it. Upon their arrival, the rest of the League had taken out the gunmen threatening to mow down the terrified hostages, the vault had been sealed to prevent the spread of the noxious gas, and after being run through a decontamination chamber, Barry had felt…well. A little off, and more than a little disoriented, but mostly fine.
The chemical analysts told him that it was a mixture of sarin and kryptonite—something potent enough to completely wipe out any normal human being upon exposure and send Superman staggering to the Hall to sleep it off even though he had only felt it through a quarter of an inch of fake leather—but Barry is a meta-human with a metabolism so fast that he has an entire menu dedicated to him at the local subway shop, so the gas only served to make his stomach a bit queasy.
At first, that is.
Because after reassuring the League that he was fine—and apologizing again for ruining an entire vault of cash, which is something that Bruce waved off with the same nonchalance with which he always waves off millions of dollars’ worth of property damage—Barry had retreated back to the safety of his warehouse, where things had...deteriorated, for a lack of better terms.
Because he was okay earlier today. Honestly, he was. But now, Barry kind of feels like he’s dying.
It had come on so suddenly—the stark, searing pain in his abdomen, as though someone had gripped onto his insides and squeezed—and even with his super speed, Barry had just barely gotten to the bathroom in time to throw himself down over the toilet as he began to gag. And Barry doesn’t know how much food is even left in his body at this point, but his stomach continues to roll, set in motion by the steady waves of nausea that won’t seem to abate, so it isn’t long before he’s heaving over the edge of the porcelain bowl for the fifth time in the last forty minutes, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes as each lurch makes his head pound in protest.
Once he’s completely certain that he’s done throwing up everything that he has ever eaten (at least, for the time being), Barry pushes away from the toilet and sinks back down onto the floor, where he rests his flushed, sweaty face against the cool concrete. Each breath hitches in his chest, rattles out from between his teeth in the form of a thin wheeze as drool continues to drip from the corners of his mouth. And even though Barry feels like he’s burning alive, his shoulders shake as though he were freezing.
He hasn’t been sick like this since before the accident—since his sophomore year of high school, when he somehow both caught the flu and contracted bronchitis in the same awful, terrible week—and, truthfully, he doesn’t want to be alone when each moment feels like more of a struggle than the last.
But he can’t go to the League with this. He can’t go to the League with this because they need to take care of Clark, first of all. And, second of all, Barry really, really doesn’t want them to see him in this condition.
They can’t see him like this. They wouldn’t want to see him like this. They wouldn’t want to take care of some stupid kid that couldn’t even complete a mission without messing it all up, especially given the fact that he isn’t in any mortal danger—wouldn’t want to watch him gag and sweat and whine between clenched teeth. And, even worse than that, having them here would be a waste of their time—a selfish waste of their time that Barry is ashamed for even thinking about asking for.
Barry can take care of it himself, he thinks, even as his vision blurs. He has always taken care of himself before, and he can most certainly continue to take care of himself now.
(But he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to. He’s scared and he’s in pain and he misses his mom and, before he can stop himself, he’s crying, sobbing in between each wet cough and involuntary shiver.)
Barry’s phone chirps somewhere in the middle of his breakdown—lets out a short, 8-bit sound clip from some Daft Punk song that indicates that Victor has just sent a text—but by the time that Barry’s sobbing has tapered off into irregular sniffles, he’s so exhausted that the very thought of dragging himself out of the bathroom and over to his dresser to check what has been said makes his body screech it’s protest. And, on the off-chance that he could even make it over to the dresser without keeling over and passing out like his body evidently wants him to—an outcome that he will fully admit is statistically unlikely—Barry doesn’t know if he has the willpower to respond to a text from one of his teammates without breaking down and begging them to come over so that, at least when Barry succumbs to his eventual heat-death, he’ll do so with company.
So instead, Barry just elects to ignore the text entirely, gripping onto the sink and dragging himself onto unsteady feet so that he can splash water on his face and take a few sips that he prays will stay down before stumbling over to the bathtub and crawling into it to settle in for the night.
(He’s capable of taking care of himself, after all, but he never claimed to be great at it. And his mattress is so far away.)
He wakes up a few hours later to throw up one last time, but after that, he sleeps until morning and awakens for work feeling perfectly normal, save for the stiffness in his neck and back that stand as the only reminders for how terrible the day previous had gone.
And when he checks his phone, he finds an unopened, unanswered text from Victor:
Hey, man. You doing okay? You kind of darted right after the mission.
Barry responds with sorry vic. i fell asleep before i could check your text. but i’m doing great. With a peace sign, for good measure.
(Technically, it isn’t a lie.)